


After You

by D20Owlbear, JCutter



Series: 11 Years Isn't Enough to be in Love [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Body Swap, M/M, PWP, Porn with Feelings, Porn with Theology, Porn with physics, The Night At Crowley's Flat (Good Omens), did you ever sit in a lecture about host-guest chemistry and think "hot"?, go ahead and tell me in the comments whether this is Top!Crowley or Top!Aziraphale, really let my nerd flag fly on this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:20:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23522959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/D20Owlbear/pseuds/D20Owlbear, https://archiveofourown.org/users/JCutter/pseuds/JCutter
Summary: Right now, the only thing keeping their corporeal forms as two distinct objects were a quintillion atoms, each encircled by electrons rattling furiously against one another.He chased the memory of a dark chocolate torta caprese down Aziraphale’s throat, detaching more quantized crumbs of his self to do so, and pushed through Aziraphale’s physical form like a sieve. He threaded and settled into Aziraphale’s now-unoccupied atoms. From very far away, Aziraphale groaned, his naked chest shuddering against Crowley’s.Sequel toGet Thee Behind Me, Foul Fiend.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: 11 Years Isn't Enough to be in Love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1544836
Comments: 27
Kudos: 99
Collections: Break in Case of Emergency: Fluff and Love, Chaotic Omens: The Fallout of a Big Bang, Crowley's Demonic Side, kashiichan's favourites





	After You

**Author's Note:**

> This began as a pretty physics-y fic, and then morphed into some theological body-swap fun. I hope folks like the combination of the two! I also threw in some footnotes with physics tidbits in there for folks that want to know more on the topic! This fic would be alright as a standalone, but it really is best when read after [Get Thee Behind Me, Foul Fiend](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21428446), which is a soft and wonderful fic by my friend, Janthony. <3
> 
> Also, this work would not be what it is without the extraordinary beta work of [Cassie-oh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassieoh/pseuds/cassieoh), who made sure this was understandable and who offered several lovely turns of phrase. Cassio's pinch of salt is what makes this fic's flavor really pop. Thank you!<3

_The history of the cosmos_  
_is the history of the struggle of becoming._  
_When the dim flux of unformed life_  
_struggled, convulsed back and forth upon itself,_  
_and broke at last into light and dark_  
_came into existence as light,_  
_came into existence as cold shadow_  
_then every atom of the cosmos trembled with delight._  
  
_D. H. Lawrence_

**After You**

In the kitchen of a minimalist flat in Mayfair, London, a very new spoon clinked around the inside of a teacup. It had just been snapped into existence, and was coming to terms with being a structure rather than a pocketful of atoms adrift in the atmosphere. Existence as a spoon was alright so far, though it now contained a great many more protons than it was used to.

As soon as Crowley had opened the door to his flat, Aziraphale at his back, he had gestured vaguely to the living room with a muttered, “I’ll make tea,” and turned on his heel straight into the empty kitchen. The world hadn’t ended earlier that afternoon, but Crowley could still feel it processing in fits and starts, reminding him almost nostalgically of The Beginning. Earth had shaken and frothed for its first three days of existence, its oceans tossing directionlessly and axis wobbling madly until God hung the moon around the infantile planet.

Crowley tried to breathe. He tried to ignore the surreal gauze in the air, wrapped around a bleeding, limping reality. He tried not to fantasize about curling up in Aziraphale’s arms and sleeping for a month. He wasn’t quite sure he succeeded in any of the things he tried. Crowley clinked the newly extant spoon against the rim of the cup, catching a few stray drops of tea, and the spoon ceased to be.

He could hear Aziraphale shifting on the sofa by the creaks of neglected cushions, and the hushed scuff of Balmoral boots on stone flooring. And, if he strained, he could hear the rasp of nervous hands smoothing a velvet waistcoat.

When he had finished stalling as much as he could reasonably excuse — and then a few moments more for good measure — Crowley took the steaming tea and an empty wine glass for himself into his living room. Aziraphale sat in the middle of the sofa, the sparse furniture and wide room making him look very alone. He was looking down the long, dark hall adjacent to the room and Crowley wondered if he could see the shadow of verdant leaves from where he sat. 

Crowley hesitated in the doorway.

“Aziraphale,” he said, voice snagging on the name. It sounded ridiculously loud in the silence of the flat; Crowley wished he had some sort of gurgling fountain. Hell, even a gramophone would do. Anything to break the interminable silence because he had no intentions of turning on the telly. He cleared his throat and held out the teacup.

Aziraphale’s eyes jumped up to his, snapped from his quiet contemplation of the hallway. For a moment, Crowley feared Aziraphale would thank him. Then his eyes crinkled.

“Actually dear, I think I’ll have what you’re having,” Aziraphale said, wry and warm. He gestured to the wine glass dangling from Crowley’s fingers.

Crowley’s lips twitched, and a second wineglass clinked against the first in his hand. In the other appeared the bottle he had intended to drink. Aziraphale’s last case of Châteauneuf-du-Pape was gone – _burned_ , his mind hissed – but that wasn’t the only southern Rhône grape wine in existence.

Crowley passed one of the empty glasses to Aziraphale and sat down on the far end of the sofa. Surely the proximity would be permitted — it had been a rough day.

“How do we know this will work?” Crowley asked, filling their glasses. He didn’t have to say what _this_ was. The bus ride home had been long enough to figure out Agnus Nutter’s point. “ _Probably explode_ , I believe, was our last consensus on the matter.”

Aziraphale watched the red filling his glass. Suddenly he chuckled to himself, swirling the glass in a parody of serious contemplation.

“Well, it won’t be the first time one of us has ‘inhabited’ the other,” Aziraphale said primly.

Crowley was glad he hadn’t been taking a sip at that moment, though he choked regardless. “Surprised you’re thinking about that right now, angel,” he teased as if he hadn’t thought about it every day for eleven years.

“I’m thinking of a lot of good memories.”

How many involved himself, Crowley wondered. Aziraphale occupied nearly every one of his. “Any other particularly good ones?”

Aziraphale finally looked up at him, smiling, and there was more than a trace of playful bastard in it. “How you always talk about animals in the afterglow. Oh, and that face you made when I—”

Crowley growled behind the rim of his glass, cutting Aziraphale off. “If you want me to focus on a plan, you can’t go distracting me.”

When he looked up again, Aziraphale had fixed him with a fond look, pupils dilated. 

Caught, Aziraphale blinked, cleared his throat, and regarded Crowley archly over his wine glass. “Don’t make noises like that, or it won’t be me doing the distracting.”

The last eleven years hadn’t been chaste; Aziraphale was a hedonist, Crowley was a tempter – they’d never stood a chance once they cracked _that_ particular bottle open. It had happened often enough that he could smell the tang of Aziraphale’s desire, something he was rarely strong enough to resist. Crowley feared if he tried to speak now the best he could produce would be garbled consonants. He slowly set his glass down on the table and scooted closer to the center of the couch. Aziraphale straightened up with a cock of his head, wearing that achingly familiar expression of self-preservation warring with desire. Crowley could _taste_ him wrapping that polite reserve around himself like armor. Before the angel was lost to him entirely, Crowley seized his hand, and Aziraphale jumped.

Crowley knew he wasn’t good at this. His voice tangled on tender words, he grabbed when he meant to caress, he postured when he meant to comfort. He was lucky, damned lucky, that Aziraphale was as patient as he was. That he would always be patient as long as Crowley was genuinely trying.

“Let me take care of us,” Crowley murmured and savored the recognition in those azure eyes. “I have an idea. No explosions, I promise.”

“Not even a little one?” Aziraphale teased, _sotto voce_. 

“Sssstop,” Crowley hissed, squeezing his eyes shut. “If we get distracted, I won’t take the blame, angel. I mean it, I _won’t_.”

“Yes, alright, hush,” Aziraphale conceded, but he was gripping his own thigh to stop himself from reaching out. “Survive first, champagne later.”

“Champagne. Right.”

Crowley studied Aziraphale’s hand, clasped in his own as if they were about to shake before a business deal. It was too easy to remember the last time they’d done this. The afternoon Crowley had first told Aziraphale of the Antichrist’s arrival on Earth. The evening he persuaded Aziraphale to just once, just now, let Crowley take care of him. The night he convinced Aziraphale to help him save the world by raising a child together. Stupid, _stupid_. 

None of Crowley’s plans ever worked out. 

He couldn’t do this. 

He had to.

With a free hand, he took off his sunglasses, folded the temples, and set them down on the table.

Right now, the only thing keeping their corporeal forms as two distinct objects were a quintillion atoms, each framed by electrons rattling furiously against one another.[1] At that moment, they acted as a wall for any normal human – one couldn’t just _shove_ a solid object into the same physical space as another – but Crowley could imagine them as a permeable membrane. He could direct the electrons to whirl just around one another in hairbreadth turns like a flock of birds. Crowley pressed his hand against Aziraphale’s and this time it slipped inside. The air blurred as if it should be humming, though the effect was soundless. 

Reality stumbled and gave a prim, disapproving cough as Crowley’s desires shouldered ahead of it in the queue. Crowley, as was his wont, ignored it entirely.

Aziraphale leaned in, fascinated, as Crowley threaded his fingers _through_ Aziraphale’s. He pushed against the membrane of Aziraphale’s corporeal form and slid, sizzling, into Aziraphale’s essence. Aziraphale’s rapid heartbeat sang through Crowley’s veins, _his_ breath caught in Crowley’s throat, _his_ nails dug into Crowley’s thigh.

_No, wait, that one is actually happening._

Crowley’s eyes snapped up to Aziraphale’s as the angel’s hand forcibly relaxed. He caressed Crowley’s knee comfortingly, as if _Crowley_ were the nervous one. It was suddenly too hard to be _elsewhere_ , too easy to be here in the flesh, throat-parchingly close to Aziraphale’s body. There was nowhere he’d rather be than in this corporeal form, and Aziraphale in that one.

_Focus, you stupid snake._ Crowley looked back down. Their hands blurred further together, the distortions running up to their wrists. Aziraphale’s essence, that undiscovered particle-wave that bore humans beyond life, carried all that Aziraphale was, all of his memories. Crowley could feel the slide of parchment under his palm, the thin crackling glaze of a pastry in his fingers, the solid hilt of a sword – muscle memories as old as their corporeal forms.

Out of the corner of his eye, Crowley saw a dart of pink. Aziraphale licked his lips, his eyes wide and glittering in the low light of the living room. Where was he again? Crowley couldn’t take his eyes off the glisten that tongue had left behind.

Their hands snapped back apart, whole and distinct once more. Aziraphale’s mouth was too close, his eyes too bright. Too focused on Crowley’s now, too _knowing._

He couldn’t do this.

“I can’t seem to— I can’t— Can I do something really quick, angel?” Crowley asked, helpless.

Aziraphale’s hand curled around his. “Anything you need.”

Crowley leaned in and kissed him. He pressed his lips to Aziraphale’s as gently as he had pressed their hands together. It was Aziraphale who pushed in, who opened his mouth, who slid his other hand up Crowley’s wrist, slightly calloused fingertips tracing the delicate skin there. Crowley was tired of resisting after such a long and gut-wrenching day, and he could taste Aziraphale’s relief as keen as his own. _Who in Heaven or Hell gives a damn anymore, anyway?_

He was grateful for the valence electrons violently repelling one another. Instead of falling through Aziraphale, he could touch him, hold him, lick every remaining drop of Rhône grape wine from Aziraphale’s tongue. He slid his fingers into Aziraphale’s hair and Aziraphale groaned into his mouth. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to fall into Aziraphale, to soak into the soil like rain. All of his stupidity, his rot, his failures, would melt into a gentle petrichor within Aziraphale’s heart.

Aziraphale’s back hit the sofa with a soft _whump_ , and his breath left him in a gasp. Crowley was practically in Aziraphale’s lap, fingers already pulling at his waistcoat buttons, when he saw Aziraphale’s startled expression. Years of backpedaling instinct squeezed Crowley’s throat, and he froze. The waistcoat buttons were cool under his fingers, caught between the chill air of his flat and the warmth of Aziraphale. 

“Clothes are going to make this process harder,” he said, unsure of where the words were coming from. “Can’t pour wine if you can’t see the glass.” Oh, that sounded ridiculous even to him. 

Aziraphale smiled, slow and indulgent. “Makes perfect sense, dear.”

It was a foolish pretense but what on Earth wasn’t? What was their connection but thousands of years of foolish pretenses?

Aziraphale’s waistcoat came undone and Crowley slid it over his shoulders. With an arm around Crowley’s neck, Aziraphale drew him back down into a searing kiss. Crowley barely noticed the individual items of clothing after that; all he cared about was each new square centimeter of Aziraphale’s skin he could get under his hands. He tongued Aziraphale’s collarbone, dragged his teeth along Aziraphale’s throat

Eleven years of constantly looking over their shoulder, of standing three feet apart because they were but a single hand-brush away from succumbing, was finished. Any semblance of safety was well and truly drowned, and Crowley was almost giddy with relief. He grabbed a soft, thick thigh with a hard _slap_ and ripples ran across Aziraphale’s skin like a charge through the electron sea within a wire. Aziraphale’s back arched off from the sofa with a moan, and fingernails dug into Crowley’s hips. It was almost painful but not quite, like Aziraphale’s erection pressed sharply against Crowley’s own, the two of them squeezed between their bodies. They weren’t so perfectly distinct now; he could hear Aziraphale’s heartbeat louder than his own against his chest and the slick of sweat between their bellies could have belonged to either of them. 

He slid between Aziraphale’s legs and leaned back, grinning and admiring the disheveled mess of an angel he had made. No doubt, Aziraphale’s mind was miles away from Heaven’s retribution, right where Crowley wanted it. He hooked a forefinger in one of Aziraphale’s sock garters and watched Aziraphale’s hazy pleasure harden into a _don’t you dare_ scowl. The urge to snap the strap was almost irresistible, but there was very little Crowley hated more than being predictable.[2] Instead, he pressed both palms against Aziraphale’s ankles and _sank_.

The distinct orbitals of their valence electrons gave way with a gasp from Aziraphale that sounded very far away, and Aziraphale’s calves and Crowley’s hands became a haze. Their skin was not transparent so much as it was nonexistent, sinew and muscle were not visible underneath. They had been replaced by a disorganized tumble of carbon chains without classification, a visceral reminder that their corporeal forms were mere fistfuls of molecules piloted by consciousness like marionettes on strings. Without their identity, their ownership, the oneness of _this is me_ , this body was nothing; Crowley could be converted into raw energy as he had just the day before and survive the heat death of the universe.

Crowley fell onto his elbows quite suddenly, sprawled across the couch and becoming shrouded in the sandstorm cloud of “Aziraphale.” The granules frothed over him, welcoming him deeper into the quicksand, and the carbon chains began uncurling, unlinking, the lack of conscious intent tearing at them like radiation.

Curiosity crowded out Crowley’s startlement in the next moment, as new memories emanated from Aziraphale: the leather cords of Roman _caligae_ wrapped around those calves, the lap of cold saltwater on some unknown beach, Crowley’s own hands one fateful evening above the bookshop.

Just beneath the memories crept a threat, huge and inexorable, a river of magma under the thinnest crust of cooling rock. Crowley brushed against the crust with his outermost electrons, feeling them excite to higher energy levels as they interwove with Aziraphale’s and tried to push them apart. The particles skittered off the magma and, overwhelmed, plummeted back toward their nuclei, sending tiny bursts of energy out into Aziraphale as they went.[3]

Crowley’s rapidly disintegrating nervous system registered the sensation only as searing heat and so it took him a moment to realize what it was, to see the leylines of holy light he was shoving his hands into, the raw tendrils of power that gave Aziraphale the ability to smite demons and bless water. They were a part of Aziraphale himself and would infuse any physical construct he occupied.

The urge to fission into energy and _get away_ was more overwhelming than the urge to snap Aziraphale’s sock garters, and it was that brief, primal memory that shook Crowley.

Aziraphale was right. They could not occupy one form. If Crowley was going to enter, Aziraphale had to leave.

Crowley pulled back, out of Aziraphale. He imagined Azirapahale’s legs and his own hands whole. Aziraphale’s chest heaved and Crowley leaned into his guilt like pressing on a bruise, a check against his own hubris. He had hoped they could briefly occupy one form and with something akin to mitosis, become two corporeal forms with Aziraphale driving Crowley’s and vice versa. But instead, they would have to simultaneously supplant the other in their existing forms, souls slipping past one another like a ha’penny passed between fingers, hidden from the eyes of a peering audience, a sleight of hand to deceive Aziraphale’s very nature.

“Probably explode,” Crowley managed to exhale.

Exasperation surfaced through the sea of emotions that played across Aziraphale’s face. “You think so?” he bit out.

Crowley winced. “Right. Okay, new plan.” He clenched his fists repeatedly, trying to will away the tingly paresthesia.

“Alpha Centauri,” Aziraphale said flatly.

“They’d find us, angel,” Crowley made himself say, his heart pounding, because oh how it hurt to have to deny Aziraphale that. 

“Crowley, this isn’t a good idea.”

“That one wasn’t, I know. I have a better one.”

“ _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale said, and the sharp intonation pierced Crowley’s heart. “I could feel you hurting. Burning. You could have been _destroyed_. I could feel my— Rather, Heaven’s—”

“I know, angel,” Crowley said, hoping he’d manage to sound like something approaching soothing. He sat back, still kneeling on the couch between Aziraphale’s widespread legs, and rested a hand on Aziraphale’s ankle. “I’ll be fine. We’ll have to trade places at the same time. Move only our ‘selves’ and keep the constructs the same.”

Aziraphale’s flat stare might have been a deterrent, had Crowley not gotten used to it over thousands of years, and if it hadn’t been tinged with affection for the last eleven.

“And do you know how to do that?” Aziraphale asked sweetly, in a tone more appropriate for _Would you like to sell the Bentley?_ That thought and the memory of burning wreckage sent a pang through Crowley’s chest.

Crowley glared. “I have _some_ idea.”

“Oh, where have I heard that before?”

“Don’t start,” Crowley warned.

Aziraphale raised a hand and began to count fingers, “Ur, 2000 BC; Babylon, 353 BC—”

“You didn’t disagree with me about Alexander!” Crowley scowled, but his lips twitched at Aziraphale’s superior smile. It was probably a sign of his impending descent into a besotted fool, but he enjoyed when Aziraphale got like this, the smug bastard.

“—Argolis, 66 AD; oh and what year was that stunt you pulled in Istanbul—”

“Aziraphale, bless it, shut up!” Crowley took the hand that had been counting off fingers and Aziraphale laughed. It tipped Crowley over into laughter himself, and he rested his forehead against the hand he had stolen, shoulders shaking.

“Bastard,” he accused.

Aziraphale was still smug. “You deserve it after that stunt just now.”

“I didn’t know that was going to happen,” Crowley said quietly, mirth subsiding.

Aziraphale loosened his hand from Crowley’s grip and touched Crowley’s hair, a motion halfway between brushing it back and running his fingers through it. “I know.”

Silence settled back into the room again, though a more comfortable one than the last. Crowley lounged back on the sofa, half-sprawled in a mirror of the way Aziraphale still sat. Aziraphale stretched his legs across Crowley’s lap with a self-satisfied smile and an elbow over the sofa’s armrest, looking every inch like temptation on a Victorian chaise. 

“Don’t distract me,” Crowley said miserably with a certain amount of affectionate pride at Aziraphale’s attempt. Crowley would not be deterred. “Agnus has been right about everything else so far.”

“I don’t think her prophecy is incorrect. _I_ told it to _you_ , for Heaven’s sake.” Aziraphale miracled his glass back into his hand. “It’s not worth your existence.”

Crowley followed suit and took a sip before he said, “We’ll be safe if you leave that form when I enter it. And then you come into me. You’re versatile, aren’t you, angel?”

“My dear, that word has connotations when you’re talking of– of _entering_ –”

“I know the connotations,” Crowley rejoined and was rewarded with a dash of red across Aziraphale’s cheeks. He rested a hand on Aziraphale’s knee and leaned in. “Trust me?”

Aziraphale finished off his glass and swung his legs down despondently. “Explain it to me, then.”

So Crowley did. He started out by trying to explain how their forms were three-dimensional projections created by the properties of single-dimensional points, and they themselves were single dimensions points able to traverse three-dimensional space at-will – but Aziraphale had never shared Crowley’s interest in what humans would mistakenly call physics. So, Crowley changed tracks and cast the ideas through the lens of the way humans thought they could – and perhaps Anathema _actually_ could – channel energy.

Through each version of the explanation, Aziraphale listened, rapt and serious, nodding at the bits he could understand and holding up a hand to pause Crowley when he needed a moment to think things through. They each had another glass of wine, and another, before Aziraphale was willing to try.

Crowley took Aziraphale’s hand again as soon as the angel set down his empty glass, and watched Aziraphale take several deep breaths. They sat facing each other on the sofa – Crowley slouched with a leg folded beneath him and Aziraphale ramrod straight – and Crowley squeezed his hand. 

“You’ll tell me as soon as it hurts,” Aziraphale said, his voice firm in a way which allowed no room for misinterpretation.

“Have I ever lie to you?” Crowley challenged, hedging.

“Rarely.”

“ _Angel._ ”

“Alright,” Aziraphale huffed out a laugh. “No. I would never call you _direct_ , but no, you’ve not outright lied to me.”

“There you have it. Just come into me as I come into you.”

Aziraphale’s brows rose and he opened his mouth.

Crowley quickly placed a finger over Aziraphale’s mouth. “You can share all your clever double entendres afterward,” he teased.

Aziraphale nipped Crowley’s finger and laughed when Crowley jerked his hand back. He caught the evading hand and dragged Crowley across the couch and into his arms with a heady kiss that made Crowley slouch even further. Aziraphale ran his hands across Crowley’s forearms, up his biceps, around his shoulders, outlining the body he was aiming to occupy. He was following Crowley’s directions perfectly, mapping out the body he aimed to fill, and Crowley shivered. He supposed he should be doing the same.

He wrapped his arms around Aziraphale, getting a feel for the soft curves, the delicate folds, the broad chest, he would soon inhabit. He started shaking his _self_ loose, pulling each individual particle-wave that defined his personhood from the rest like desalinating ocean water. He gathered them up, all of himself that he could take into telephone wires, and began flowing into Aziraphale. He followed the heat of the mouth on his, the inviting density of the body in his arms, and his quantized _self_ -particles slipped faster and freer through Aziraphale’s atoms than the electrons of his physical being ever could.

Aziraphale’s memories came to Crowley again, hooking his tongue as Aziraphale’s own tongue was doing; the raspberry tang of crepes, the paprika bite of a deviled egg, the red fruit and tannins of the Chateauneuf du Pape they drank together that first night. Crowley realized he was drawing memories of himself from Aziraphale.

He chased the rich dark chocolate of a _torta caprese_ down Aziraphale’s throat, detaching more quantized crumbs of his _self_ to do so, and pushed through Aziraphale’s physical form like a sieve. The crumbs joined the neverending wall of solar neutrinos pulsing from the nearest star in ghosting through Aziraphale’s form, untouched and untouching.[4]

He sailed over them, through them, and settled into Aziraphale’s unoccupied atoms. Crowley had told Aziraphale to think about filling every cubic inch of him, like steam filled a pot, and now he did the same. From very far away, Aziraphale groaned, his naked chest shivering against Crowley’s, and Crowley continued to thread through him.

Aziraphale’s tongue slid across his, wet and warm, and Crowley capsized.

The draining vessel of his body felt distant now, like it did in the moments just before sleep, and he knew somewhere Aziraphale was filling the space he had left behind. He felt no magma river now, just a chain of lush green islands rearing out of an endless turquoise sea.

The atoms of Aziraphale’s body vibrated and spun, blurring as they had before, but Crowley no longer had eyes to see it. He felt their movement as perturbations, as shockwaves of an earthquake across some distant sea. He let the peaks crest over him, submerging him. He found himself intimately feeling Aziraphale’s torso now. He was no longer the arms wrapped around Aziraphale, but the body enclosed in someone’s arms. The memories of Aziraphale’s comforting velvet waistcoat, the threadbare jacquard on his couch, wrapped around him; he was warm at last, and he longed to slither inside and curl up until the sun rose and the sun-baked heat was one with his very being.

Moreover, he could feel Aziraphale’s _hunger_ , for food that Crowley usually disregarded, for pleasure, for the indulgence of hedonism, for _Crowley_. Both their hearts _th-thump_ ed at Crowley’s realization – but Crowley didn’t think Aziraphale needed to feel self-conscious.

There was enough of Crowley left in his body to share that feeling, to want it satisfied.

Enough of him to guide his body down, slowed by the cradle of Aziraphale’s arms, sinking to his knees on the floor between Aziraphale’s thighs. Half-conscious, more muscle memory than anything, Crowley ran his hands up Aziraphale’s calves, squeezed his thighs, and blindly nuzzled the half-hard cock before him. It twitched at his attention, the thighs in Crowley’s hands shuddering. The sensations grounded Crowley, stretched thin as he was between their two corporeal forms. Aziraphale was beside him, also strung between their two forms, and the angel’s knowledge and memory guided Crowley’s mouth to the cock before him.

He flicked his forked tongue against Aziraphale’s dorsal vein and felt a crackle of heat in his own groin, wrapped his already kiss-dark lips around the head and the crackle ignited. 

How often had Crowley felt the echo of Aziraphale’s pleasure? Dug his fingers into Aziraphale’s cloud-white hair and feel the angel clench around his cock? Been tipped over the edge by Aziraphale’s long, loud moan? 

They all paled to this.

He sucked Aziraphale’s cock deeper into his mouth and unwittingly gasped around it, savoring the feedback loop. Crowley wanted to stay there until he caught his breath but Aziraphale desperately wanted him to move, and suddenly he _was_.

Nearly helpless to it and certainly not minding, Crowley’s head bobbed in time with Aziraphale’s stuttering, constrained thrusts. _Always trying to be the nice one_. Crowley hollowed his cheeks and was rewarded with a sharp, shuddering intake of breath, and then the undeniable sensation of being engulfed in wet heat himself. They rocked together, circling in a synchronous orbit that they might never have achieved without tonight’s experiment. For a moment, it was as if they were both piloting both bodies. [5]

. Dizzy and enamored, Crowley knew he could get addicted to this, was perhaps already addicted to the way Aziraphale’s breath and atoms and cock felt, in and on and through him.

With the combination of a particularly sharp thrust and thick fingers gripping Crowley’s hair, Aziraphale buried himself to the hilt. A hot flush bloomed on Crowley’s cheeks and tears pricked the corners of his eyes with the effort not to gag, and immediately, Aziraphale pulled back until just his head rested on Crowley’s tongue. Somewhere off in the tangible world, Aziraphale whispered _sorry_ and those same fingers stroked Crowley’s face and jaw.

Crowley blinked back the moisture from his eyes and looked up into Aziraphale’s worried, chagrined face.

“Alright?” Aziraphale managed, sounding both very far away and very close all at once. 

“S’okay,” Crowley offered, tender in both senses of the word. After all, it wasn’t the first time one of them had been ungentlemanly to the other, and Crowley certainly didn’t _mind_ by any means. He ducked his head and pulled Aziraphale back into his mouth, ready to prove he was just fine, ready to push their worries away a little while longer.

And then white stars sprang across Crowley’s vision, like a flashbulb went off between them. The glow was coming from Aziraphale himself, highlighting a map Crowley already knew by heart. The marks of Love Crowley had left on him, glowing there like runway lights after a long and treacherous flight. He flicked his eyes up to try to see if he was the only one seeing this. 

Aziraphale’s eyes were wide and wet and terribly blue as he stared back, and Crowley knew what he saw. Aziraphale had returned the favor that night, with Marks of his own, and Crowley suddenly knew how to guide them the last step of the way.

Crowley pulled away from Aziraphale’s cock with a wet _pop_ and a plaintive whine from Aziraphale, that he hushed with a nip to one creamy thigh.

“Aziraphale.” It came out sharp, determined.

The puddle on the sofa made a heroic effort to sit up. “Hmm?”

“We can follow the marks. Little bits of each other already– here. I can see them all over you.”

Aziraphale carded his fingers once, twice, through Crowley’s hair, and nodded. “All over you, too.”

Crowley closed his eyes again. He focused on the soft thighs in his hands, the feet resting next to his complaining knees, the hair-dusted belly rising and falling with breath just on the other side of a luscious cock. The spots of light radiated heat as well, easy to follow in the dark.

“I’m going to try again,” Crowley warned. “Move when I do.”

“After you, dearest,” Aziraphale murmured back.

Crowley squeezed those thighs one last time, holding the points of light clearly in his mind, and _moved_.

Crowley hadn’t known what had happened that night in the bookshop, eleven years ago. Humans knew how to entangle particles in great, clever machines, but Crowley himself had never tried. He hadn’t identified that dizzying _click_ he had felt, nor had he recognized the Marks for what they were – entanglements.

States, forms, _spins_ – humans had several incomplete words for the brands Aziraphale’s lips had scored in Crowley’s flesh. They shared a oneness now, immutable as Original Sin. Once entangled, particles cease being purely individual but are now part of an inseparable whole. One constituent part cannot be fully described without considering the other. What is a demon’s wiling without an angel to thwart them? What is the fight for Good without Evil to combat?

_We are an angel and a demon_ , Aziraphale always said. _We’re hereditary enemies._ Even in his obstinance, he would not deny their oneness, the _we_ of it all.

For a moment, Crowley was suspended between them. He wasn’t _this_ corporeal form or _that_ one, and neither was Aziraphale. For a moment, he was brutally reminded that they didn’t belong on this plane of existence, that neither of them _belonged_ in either form, that Earth was just one fleshy eon in the countless ones they would now share. Together. Even _outside_ [7] their bodies, the Marks they shared glowed.

One can’t unscramble an egg without neutralizing entropy, and not even God herself dared do that. They were entangled for life.

Aziraphale’s eyes fluttered open; Crowley knew because they were both suddenly aware of the surreal, low lighting of the flat. They looked down to see a shock of auburn hair between their legs. Their fingers were buried in it, strong and sure, causing little sparks of sensation along their scalp. They tilted up the closed-eyes face in front of them, admiring the surprised and unguarded smile taking the place of the usual smirk on those decadent lips.

Crowley balked, unaccustomed to describing himself that way, and felt a flash of Aziraphale’s defiance. That body was _his_ to describe as he liked. Well Aziraphale was welcome to it, but Crowley didn’t have to watch – they were both still piloting both bodies. He sucked Aziraphale’s cock back into his mouth, and darkness fluttered back around them as Aziraphale’s eyes closed.

Warmth wrapped around Crowley, welcoming him inside the form that was once Aziraphale’s. The sensation was as sweet as sliding into Aziraphale that first time, when he curled himself around the marks that guided him in.

The fingers tightened in his hair and Crowley half-expected his head to be pulled away but instead, he felt Aziraphale’s presence leap – _past_ him, for lack of a better term, and seized formerly-Crowley’s hands and mouth. Crowley was spilled into the body sprawled on the couch, tousled hair in his hand, and a hot mouth on his cock. He thrust without meaning to, and spindly fingers dug into his thighs with an encouraging purr. _Well_ , Aziraphale was the one of the two of them with an oral fixation. Crowley let himself then, thrusting with abandon into that unbelievably soft, wet mouth. And what _was_ that tongue doing? He wasn’t going to last, this body wasn’t going to last. _Does Aziraphale know the state he left this body in?_ he wondered, and felt a rumble of mirth from Aziraphale.

_Aziraphale, you bastard!_ he thought.

Crowley grabbed himself – err, Aziraphale – and pulled him up. He accidentally pulled too hard, bringing the lanky body in front of him stumbling to his feet, surprising them both. Aziraphale’s body was strong – or Crowley’s was particularly light, it was a bit hard to tell. He didn’t suppose it mattered either way.

He pulled Aziraphale into his lap, and his cock ached when that taut bottom pressed against it, warm and tempting. Crowley felt fully in this body at last; his legs supported Aziraphale’s paltry weight, his arms were around Aziraphale’s slender body, his mouth was pressed against Aziraphale’s lips.

The last vestigates of Aziraphale’s presence slipped away, and Crowley knew Aziraphale was fully settled in as well. It could have felt surreal to fuck his own body, but that body felt foreign with Aziraphale inside. He could smell it on the skin pressed against his, taste it on the tongue – he was still fucking an angel.

He was going to fuck _Aziraphale_.

And bless it, he had damn good shoulders to do the job.

“Sit up,” he murmured, feeling a brief curl of pleasure at the lack of a hiss in it. 

He pulled Aziraphale into a kneeling position over him, groin pressing against Crowley’s broad chest. He wrapped an arm easily around the slinky waist, gripping one of Aziraphale’s bony hips as he slipped a finger into the angel. Aziraphale braced his hands on Crowley’s shoulders, pressing closer into him.

“Good legsss for thisss,” Aziraphale hissed, then gave a startled, “Oh.”

“You’ll learn to suppress it,” Crowley muttered self-consciously, stretching and stroking Aziraphale’s entrance, tickled by the easy gentleness from his tongue. He pushed a second finger inside his lover, and Aziraphale let out another hiss.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale asked, his delicate politeness sounding so false in formerly-Crowley’s throat that it bordered on mocking.

“Yes?” Crowley tried Aziraphale’s prim tenor and more-or-less succeeded.

Aziraphale rested his chin on Crowley’s head, still sitting up on his knees. “I think this is the strangest thing we have ever done.”

“Probably,” Crowley admitted. His cock bobbed against the narrow line of hair down his belly, painfully hard and desperate for the body above it and its tantalizing heat.

He reached for Aziraphale’s voice again. “Are you ready, my dear?”

Aziraphale gave a delicate _ahem_ that may have been a chuckle, and pitched his voice satirically deep. “Get a move on, angel.”

Crowley suppressed a laugh, withdrawing his fingers. “I don’t sound like that.”

“You do a little.”

He guided Aziraphale slowly, carefully, down to his cock. Aziraphale’s knees framed Crowley’s soft belly, and his light weight settled onto Crowley. With just a moment of fumbling, unaccustomed to this direction, he gently and carefully pushed inside Aziraphale.

They both drew slow breaths, chests pressed together. Crowley had never been so warm as he was now, held cozily by Aziraphale’s body with his cock buried in Aziraphale’s _essence_. He held Aziraphale by the hips, thumbs stroking the sharp bones that jut out there– Crowley loved it when Aziraphale did that to him. Aziraphale shivered, then winced.

“Your body is a bit tighter than mine, dearest,” Aziraphale said, shifting a little. And didn’t _that_ pet name sound odd from Crowley’s throat. He could get used to it though. If Aziraphale wanted. Some day.

“Higher-strung, I think,” Crowley confessed, thighs shaking with the effort to hold still.

When Aziraphale, at last, nodded against Crowley’s cheek, Crowley began to move. He curled his fingers tightly around Aziraphale’s hips and lifted him with each stroke, adoring the strength in his newly broad shoulders and steady hands. Aziraphale pressed a hand against Crowley’s chest, nails curling in the soft blond hair there, and shivers of pleasure brought goosebumps to Crowley’s arms. Aziraphale made a pleased sound. That same hand fell to Crowley’s round belly and gently dragged nails across it, and _god_ if that’s what it felt like for Aziraphale, Crowley was going to do it every time in the future.

All the while, Crowley lifted and dropped. Those nails dragged, sending more dizzying tingles to Crowley’s spine. At last, Aziraphale began pushing back. Crowley groaned, long and low into Aziraphale’s pointy shoulder. He met each of Aziraphale’s falls with a thrust upward, and their pace quickened. A sheen of sweat gleamed on Aziraphale’s narrow collarbones; Crowley _had_ to dart forward to taste it. He nipped a gleaming collarbone too, and Aziraphale arched in his lap. Muscles seized around Crowley’s cock, and he cried out with the effort of stopping himself from tipping off the precipice.

“Keep— please keep—” Aziraphale groaned out, grinding down onto Crowley, the minx.

“Always,” Crowley said, scraping Aziraphale’s throat with his teeth. “Always, always,” he punctuated with each bite.

Aziraphale’s hand on his chest ghosted over to one nipple, and pinched when he found it. Crowley bucked hard without meaning to, and Aziraphale keened.

“Fuck,” Crowley growled, and hearing it in Aziraphale’s delicate voice sent nearly overwhelming heat pooling in his groin. He pressed deeper into Aziraphale, who, in turn, gasped against Crowley’s cheek.

“S-sorry—” Crowley said, very nearly hissing despite the new tongue he found himself enjoying.

“Don’t be,” Aziraphale said, and caught his lips in a sloppy kiss, adoring and passionate.

Crowley didn’t need to be told twice. He broke the kiss and slung an arm around Aziraphale’s slender body, thrusting fast and hard into him, forehead buried in his shoulder.

Crowley tried to reach a hand between them, but Aziraphale grabbed it and placed it on his narrow hip. He squeezed his own hand between them, and with each of Crowley’s thrusts, he pulled desperately at his cock. Crowley hung onto Aziraphale’s hips for dear life as the angel rose and fell on his lap. The sight of it, the total lack of self-consciousness, the squeeze of Aziraphale’s muscles around Crowley – and he was finished.

He fissioned apart, spilling into Aziraphale, throwing his head back against the sofa-back with unthinking cries. His thrusts stuttered and tapered off, and now Aziraphale’s gasps were the loudest noise in the room. With just a few more pulls, Aziraphale released, warm and wet, between their bodies. Crowley raised his head to watch. Spent, Aziraphale rested his forehead against Crowley’s, his coarse red hair pressed between their sweat-slicked brows.

It took a moment for Crowley’s vision to clear, and another moment to process the view. Aziraphale-as-Crowley slouched in Crowley’s lap, thighs trembling, eyes closed, and a slight smile on his lips. Crowley’s cock slipped out of him, half-hard and sated.

“Told you we could do it,” Crowley said, savoring the smug lilt in Aziraphale’s throat.

“Never doubted usss for a moment,” Aziraphale replied, and cleared his throat. “ _Us_ , I mean.”

Crowley snorted. “Now you’re the serpent,” he teased.

Aziraphale leaned back with a huff, still smiling, and the unguarded adoration in those yellow snake-eyes took Crowley’s breath away. He never imagined he could make that expression and here was Aziraphale yet-again showing him something about himself.

“You know what this means?” Crowley blurted, unable to look away from Aziraphale’s burning stare.

Aziraphale shifted a bit and stretched. “What’s that?”

“ _Well_ , those Marks are permanent. We’re–” Crowley almost said _entangled_. “–bound, now. In these bodies and beyond.”

“I know.” Aziraphale’s yellow eyes glittered with mirth.

“So you wanted–?”

“Of course.”

“And after...?” Crowley was starting to feel a bit dizzy.

“Absolutely.” Aziraphale’s smile fell. He bit his lip, and didn’t _that_ look bizarre on Crowley’s face. “Don’t you?”

“Yes! Definitely yes, angel, always.” Crowley laughed, relieved, and he kissed the budding frown on Aziraphale’s mouth. “Wasn’t that obvious?”

“Not always,” Aziraphale said archly, but his frown softened. “Today has been rather– well, a lot has happened, and…”

“And,” Crowley picked up, as Aziraphale trailed off, and he didn’t hide his guilt. “I said some things earlier today that I wish I hadn’t. That I didn’t mean.”

Aziraphale fiddled with his hands. “I suppose it’s only fair. Over the years, I’ve certainly said some things as well.”

Crowley tightened his arms around Aziraphale and relished the feel of Aziraphale’s body relaxing against his. “Well too bad for us – we’re stuck together now.”

“We’ll try to make the best of it,” Aziraphale said cheerfully. “Starting with this magic trick of ours.”

“For all that is unholy, _please_ don’t call it that,” Crowley begged. “We know how your magic goes.”

“Better than yours!” Aziraphale protested, resting his head on Crowley’s broad shoulder.

Without speaking, Crowley raised one hand with a snap and cleaned them both up. The silence lingered judgmentally between them, and Crowley could feel Aziraphale bristling. Then, Aziraphale huffed out a laugh.

“You’ll have to get used to doing that the other direction, like I do,” he said.

“Hm,” Crowley said noncommittally, repeating the gesture downward, without a snap this time. 

“This may take a while,” Aziraphale teased.

“Oh, shut up,” Crowley said, then paused, considering.

“Shall we begin practicing, then, my dear?” Crowley asked primly, with a polite tilt of his angelic head.

“Let’s get to it, angel,” Aziraphale drawled, and his smirk was all demon.

_fin._

1 Humans had a variety of models for what in Heaven’s name was going on down there, each uniquely more incorrect than the last. Crowley had wagered Aziraphale the sketch of the two of them together that Leo had done that humans would figure out the dinosaur punchline before the atomic and so far, it looked like he was going to keep it. Return to text

2 Things Crowley hates in no particular order: Being thanked, being predictable, being early, and being forced to listen to Aziraphale describe how Oscar Wilde’s dreadfully soft hair curled just so about his ears but how it sometimes fell in his eyes and had to be tucked back. Crowley had worn his hair long for nearly all of the last thousand years and had received no such fussing. Return to text

3 An area of physics humans are vaguely close to comprehending is energy emission in defined quantities. You didn’t think it was cast about willy-nilly like God’s pocket-sand in the face of self-described intellectuals, did you? Well, you wouldn’t be precisely wrong, and you’d be closer than [”packets”](http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mod5.html), but don’t spoil it for everyone. Return to text

4 Neutrinos, the tiny fiends that they are, have a unique set of properties that minimize reactions with other [sorts of particles](https://neutrinos.fnal.gov/sources/solar-neutrinos/). In fact, trillions of solar neutrinos pass undetected through your body every second of every day of every year of your life. Return to text

5 _Hold Me Close_ was not playing, but it may as well have been. [6] Return to text

6 Crowley would generally consider himself shameless, but he kept his television habits rather tight under a bonnet. Aziraphale knew of Crowley’s fondness for Golden Girls, but Crowley hadn’t gotten around to telling him of his passion for slow burn romances.Return to text

7 Crowley was very nearly distracted by the lack of a correct verb for their current dimensional position compared to the rest of space-time, but Aziraphale proved to be an excellent reason to focus.Return to text


End file.
